ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

But I like, I like.

I love Framed but I get annoyed every time a Marvel movie zilches my overall record

Will we be using this thread for discussion of films that are not on your list but are still, say, Morbius favorites?

Just the ones on the list, think there are several which wouldn't be there without his influence.

just downloaded sherlock jr, which i think just sneaks in as public domain. only i seem to have an entirely silent one and i can her neighbours clanking around

Looking through the list, some of my favourite directors, Louis Malle, Miloš Forman, Roy Andersson, Sidney Lumet, are either missing entirely or have a single entry, think this is probably A Good Thing on a personal level, more to explore, less so to those whose favourites are more well-represented I suppose, though otoh everyone likes talking about their favourites.

xp There are many different options for watching Sherlock Jr on YouTube with different soundtracks.

To your last post: that is sort of the whole good and bad of lists in a nutshell.

I've watched the first hundred.

For those who have MUBI, try to catch The General over the next 3 days before it gets yanked

I really am going to be forced to watch Holiday on the Buses huh

Whose first place vote was that?

Is Holiday on the Buses the same as Mexican Bus Ride?

Man those MUBI Leaving Soons are torture. I rewatched THE GENERAL recently and maybe still have it saved on my cable box so I think I will pass on that and watch a few others.

i never her.

finished Sherlock Jr as it was only 44 minutes long. (this was an archive.org download rather than youtube. ogg video in fact, only 100MB, 400x300 but perfectly watchable)

is that a recognised meaning of the work sheik?

yes -

2 usually sheik : a man supposed to be irresistibly attractive to romantic young women

lots of things that are now cliches, probably a lot different back in 1924. the suitcase jump kinda spoilt it - everything else was at least possible

THE GENERAL also avaiable in several other places, Amazon Prime, Criterion and... wait for it... Tubi. https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-general

Actually I have to be careful here as I have been fooled before. Oftentimes something will show up there as being on Amazon Prime but in fact it is only there with a subscription, a subscription to MUBI.

Is Holiday on the Buses the same as Mexican Bus Ride?

― The Windows of the URL (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 February 2023 17:27 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I like to think so.

As Mark S likes to tell me, the first On The Buses film was the highest grossing film at the box office that year.

Pfunkboy was Holiday on the Bus's #1 vote

I knew it would be him, that wacky pfunkboy.

hes a menace

> I knew it would be him, that wacky pfunkboy.
> ― Toshirō Nofune (The Seventh ILXorai)

letterboxd, the vexing and sometimes OK film logging website

Ok, close enough to Monday.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Sherlock_jr_poster.jpg

Sherlock, Jr., Buster Keaton 1924
Morbies #480 Sight & Sound Critics #54
Youtube link

First time I'd seen this, I do have a complete Buster Keaton box set but am only halfway through it. Had to watch it twice as the story only made sense with the final scene (to be fair the fact that I had about 20 acupuncture needles stuck in me probably didn't help) - second viewing I found I could appreciate the whole thing, not just the astounding set-piece stunt scenes. Suppose the reason that this is the Keaton film of choice is not just the intricate plotting, the metafictionality of having the action take place on a cinema screen as a projection of the character's own life, represented as this grand, escapist drama is a brilliant conceit, and the final scene where he learns how to propose to his girlfriend by watching the couple on screen is just a great bit of cinema. Also recognised a few scenes from the 1980 documentary series "Hollywood" - including the water tower shot which broke Keaton's neck.

I loved it when I saw it in my 20s, just kind of drifted away.

On the Keaton thread, I posted about how perplexing Bogdanovich's Keaton documentary was.

What about it?

Buster Keaton

I kind of liked that but fair enough.

THE GENERAL also avaiable in several other places, Amazon Prime, Criterion and... wait for it... Tubi. https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-general

― The Windows of the URL (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, February 12, 2023 11:34 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also Wikipedia (it entered the public domain last year): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_(1926_film)

Oh wait, actually, it's been in the public domain for decades. But anyway, yeah, it's widely available.

That's happened to me more than once, seeing multiple versions of the same film, sometimes on the same platform, many in terrible shape, wondering why this is so and then... d'oh!

everything up to and including man with a movie camera is public domain (in usa, other places vary). i think the rules changed so that some things were, then weren't, then were again but I've also read that once a thing is pd its always pd so...

but what you will find is that some things have later audio, hence the completely silent versions on places like archive.org

the problem i had with Sherlock Jr was, despite having not seen it before, everything was a bit too familiar through clips and copies.

My current favorite BK is The Navigator which is in the sweet spot of having seen it enough times but not too many times, but that could easily change of course.

I just watched Sherlock Jr for the first time. really lovely film, a nice way to kick things off. a couple notes and questions:

- near the beginning, the pile of trash, the dollars within it, the wallet with many dollars within it, and the woman who was missing a dollar - that was masterful, very like a stage play, and did wonders to quickly establish the nature of his character.
- there's a banana peel gag in this film. when did the banana peel gag start? when was the last banana peel gag?
- i loved the film within a film, which is most of this film, "Hearts and Pearls", and especially how the musicians were shown at the bottom of the shot, playing along. but the music that is played (via youtube) was added later on, of course. so, i think it would particularly brilliant to see this film in theaters, as it was shown then, with buster keaton in a film within a film with the musicans in real life playing music to accompany the fake musicians on the screen above them.
- i know keaton did all of his own stunts. holy shit, some of them. it's such a quick shot, but that part where he's on them motorcycle and the bridge collapses and he smoothly glides from an upper plane to a lower? he should have died! amazing.

oh yeah, and also, what is this painting at the top?

https://i.imgur.com/TCazPDQ.jpg

it resembles matisse's Dancers, but it's not that

it's a metafictional action movie presenting alternative lives, but it has a heart too = it's the EEAAO of 1924!

Episode of "Hollywood" (1980) on Chaplin, Lloyd & Keaton is here, it's well worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PvymClFrPU

will try to watch SHERLOCK JR tonight

have we had a 2010s poll btw? I know we all gave some picks in one thread or another recently

Maybe it's because of my current steady diet of Hong Kong and Indian action cinema, but though Sherlock Junior is full of great jokes what stuck out more to me is how much Keaton laid down the foundations for action cinema. This is a matter of record - Jackie Chan has spoken of his influence a lot. The stunts of course, but also stuff like the pool table scene could totally fit into a modern action film. Morbius grumbled about the lack of Keaton when ILX did an action movies poll, and I recall rolling my eyes at that a bit, but yeah he was right!

otm

The world does not deserve Buster Keaton—yet he does not complain.
-David Thomson

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Vintage_Potemkin.jpg/424px-Vintage_Potemkin.jpg

Battleship Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
Morbsies #762, Sight & Sound Critics #54, Sight & Sound Directors #93
YouTube link

I've been doing something like this since Xmas, starting with Dr M's list (I posted a list in the last movies watched thread).

And in the last month or so I've focused on the BFI list.

The Gleaners and I (Varda, 2000)
My Neighbour Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988)
Wanda (Loden, 1970)
City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)

Wanda was pretty good and the one film in the top 100 I hadn't heard of at all.

Miyazaki was fine (I took against anime for random reasons in a lame way in the past) and I felt quite a bit for the drawings of the little sister and the fluffy monster even if it was the overall package was no revelation in the end. But that's a deficiency in not really growing up with children's lit, I think.

The Varda was pretty much perfect despite the slightly annoying tics where she is playing a role.

OK, now here's one I rewatched pretty recently, and in proximity with another silent movie with thousands of cuts that will be coming up shortly enough, and ...

Eisenstein's insertion of homoerotics aside, this one just didn't hold up that well for me. Even the Odessa steps sequence felt a few, ahem, cuts below similar montage blitzes from the same era.

(And by "didn't hold up that well" I mean it's still pretty good, but I much much much prefer the theatrics of Ivan the Terrible.)

I saw it--meaning I was physically present when it was screened--in film class 40 years ago.

Potemkin's short enough to show in a film class, as I did last week with the Odessa steps sequence before switching to The Limey (the module was on editing).